This article was originally published on 09/16/2019, and updated by Darrald Webb on 06/29/2021.
Computer Aided Design (CAD) has solidified itself as a tool at the cornerstone of almost all design data produced for manufacturing across all types of industries. Whether your company is manufacturing a pen or an airplane engine, the journey of your product lifecycle is likely to begin on a computer screen.
While the benefits of CAD are well-documented and would be helpful for both Bic and Boeing, the less glamorous side is not often discussed - the enormous volume of data that it produces and the complex data management it requires.
Companies with hundreds of products may have thousands, sometimes millions of parts, assemblies and drawings. Some of those companies have been using 3D CAD for decades without any formal or automated method of managing all those data files, relying on manual methods, standard folder structures on shared network drives, historical procedures and tribal knowledge.
Managing drawings this way, of course, is how it was done in the past. Before CAD, drawings were approved by a physical signature on a print and stored in a drawing cabinet under lock and key. If you needed a copy of a drawing, you had to ask for the cabinet keys and create a blueprint of the master copy under the watchful gaze of the drawing office manager. This uncontrolled copy of the master drawing could then be walked down to the shop floor or mailed to external job shops, where further copies were made for whoever needed them.
Whether using CAD to construct a simple writing utensil or a highly complex combustion engine, data from creating the design will compile rapidly. Companies with hundreds of products may have thousands, sometimes millions of parts, assemblies and drawings, all of which require some form of data management.
CAD technology has significantly advanced product development – CAD helps you design better products faster, with fewer errors, scrap and rework. However, in many companies, the same process that was used to manage paper drawings has simply been replicated digitally using files and Product Data Management (PDM). There now might be less physical clutter, but the organizational chaos hasn’t gone away and PDM issues remain ever so common.
The risks of data management by manual means are great – and it only takes a few costly mistakes, project overruns, or product recalls to ruin your company’s reputation.
The proliferation of different 3D design tools across companies, both large and small, has resulted in a veritable explosion of data. For every project, a design team may generate thousands of files for each part, assembly and drawing, not to mention all the other project-related documents. As designs go from concept to production, they naturally become more complex. Ideas that were developed quickly for a product concept are not detailed enough or don’t consider all possible manufacturing requirements, so they must be modified or redesigned. More disciplines are involved, numerous interdependencies are created, and an abundance of iterations are produced, causing version control issues.
Keeping track of the mountains of data produced by your design teams and your CAD system can soon become overwhelming. A simple project containing just 10 assemblies, 40 parts and a drawing for each, produces 100 individual files on your hard drive for every version and revision of the design. Before you know it, those 100 files become thousands. The margin for error increases exponentially at an alarming rate.
Because CAD files are saved on some form of digital storage media – either a local hard drive, a shared network drive or (if transferring data) an email server or USB drive – the odds of files being overwritten, lost, stolen or corrupted are stacked against you. Engineers and other project stakeholders waste countless hours searching for data and addressing version control issues. With more data silos spread across different media in different locations, it’s too easy for teams to accidentally work on copies of the wrong version of a design without even realizing it.
Trying to manage so many copies of so many files leads to unreleased or incorrect versions of designs finding their way to sales, manufacturing, external suppliers, or your competition, with disastrous results.
Computers are good at automating mundane tasks, so it makes perfect sense that each CAD vendor would create their own software tools to help manage their proprietary data files. Unfortunately, PDM software has always been treated as an afterthought – the vendors build the CAD system first, then worry about CAD data management later.
PDM software does indeed provide many benefits – reducing the number of errors and frustrations detailed above – however it comes with a hefty price tag. There is the initial outlay, ongoing maintenance payments, training and consultancy fees to get you up and running, plus the dedicated servers and IT infrastructure requirements that are not included as part of the original quote.
Managing the mountains of product design data can result in a significant investment in IT infrastructure.
Cost and time to implement are probably the main reasons why so many companies decide they would rather struggle without it. All too often, CAD is sold without PDM to keep a quote within a customer’s budget. The customer then has to learn the hard way that it’s impossible to run a successful business without data management.
Without question, CAD files are the life-blood of product development. So managing these files effectively and controlling who has access to them, who can modify them, how they are shared, and how data is moved from one stage of development to the next, should be a company’s number one priority.
Data management is vital for product development teams to keep track of multiple iterations of product designs, which often include complex assemblies and hundreds or even thousands of parts.
Despite what most CAD vendors say in their marketing materials, CAD was never built with collaboration in mind. The fundamental issue preventing collaboration with CAD data is that only one person can edit a file at any one time. If an application does let more than one person open the same file at the same time, it usually makes a copy of the file on-the-fly so that any changes do not affect anyone else. This, however, defeats the purpose of collaboration – as each person is working on different copies of different files. The reason why files are locked when opened by an application is to prevent:
When there is only one designer on a project, managing all the generated CAD files using a set of folder structures on a hard drive may be manageable with due diligence. However, that is not a realistic scenario. The only way to effectively keep lead times short while innovating the next great product idea is to employ teams of designers, contractors and external suppliers while keeping sales, marketing, management and customers in the loop as well. This is when collaborating using files becomes a problem.
To avoid any such conflicts, individual design tasks can be assigned to different engineers working on the same project in an attempt to prevent anybody from working on the same files at the same time. However, all the changes made to each file must somehow be integrated into a master top-level assembly. That means that at some point – probably several times a day – somebody must open the top-level assembly to check that all the subassemblies and parts are behaving as expected and attempt to resolve any conflicts that arise.
If a file is saved before a design change is complete – such as when a designer goes home for the evening and intends to finish it the next day – the incomplete model geometry could affect other parts of the assembly. Finding where things have gone wrong and who/what is to blame is not an easy task and it could be a complete waste of time and effort, especially if it resolves itself when the design changes are finished.
Without any formal data management software, it’s impossible not to step on each other’s toes, overwrite somebody else’s work, or completely break everything.
It’s also impossible to know if somebody is editing a file, who that person is, or if all the files are saved and up-to-date. This means that any person who needs to access those files could be viewing incorrect data and all sorts of problems could ensue.
Exchanging product data with remote employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, or any other third party companies (i.e. overseas manufacturers), compounds these issues even further. If a company is simply manufacturing the end result, the only thing you need to do is make sure they have the correct version of the files to work with. If a contract designer or a remote employee needs to make edits to the files, all the problems listed above also apply, only they become worse.
Outsourcing reduces overheads, but it also increases risk. There are many stakeholders at every stage of a project who need access to the latest design data. Unless there is an alignment of processes and applications, there’s a real potential for misunderstanding and loss of control. Managing the distribution of data across many different sites and making it available when needed is difficult, especially when data is siloed or there are multiple definitions of the same data stored in multiple locations and you only want certain data to travel outside of your firewall.
Any person or entity that does not have access to your company network must receive the data files by some other means. Common methods include email attachments,File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites and file-sharing services such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive.
Let’s examine the pros and cons of each method of sharing data:
For convenience, nothing beats email. It provides a quick and easy way to document your requirements in as much detail as needed and attach as many files as you wish, creating a permanent record of every conversation. However, using email to share complicated, bulky CAD files has inherent pitfalls.
Attachment Size Limits – This varies for each email server and company’s admin settings. Some are as low as 4MB, some as high as 25MB, but when you receive an automated email back from your supplier stating that your email was rejected due to file-size limits, that’s more work for you. You must either break the attachment down into smaller ZIP files or ask your supplier if there are other ways you can send the files.
CONFUSING FILE COPIES - The more versions of your design that you send to an external partner, the more likely there will be confusion over which version is the latest and most up-to-date.
Antiquated, but still in use today, the FTP is a standard network protocol usually accessed via a cryptic Internet Protocol (IP) address with a supplied username and password. Security can be improved if the FTPS or SFTP protocols are used to encrypt network traffic. Some key things to consider when using FTP sites:
File-sharing services, such as Google Drive or Dropbox, are very popular and enable users to send files of any size very easily. Files can either be copied into a special folder on your hard drive that automatically syncs with the service in the cloud, or you can upload files using a web browser. The recipient only needs to click a link to download the file locally.
With any method of transmitting data files, there are concerns around security, mistakes and uncontrolled copies. File type and file version can also be an issue. If the recipient is not on the same version of the same software as you, then they will not be able to open the files. You must, therefore, make sure that the files you send are compatible with whatever system they use. If they only need to view the files, they will need to download and install compatible viewing software.
Having to check a CAD design in and out from “the vault” is a major flaw in PDM systems. Once an external party has your files and they are able to open them and work on them, you can do nothing but wait until they have made their edits and have sent the changed files back to you (using one of the same methods outlined above).
It is also impossible to know what changes are being made, if any. Since your partners are not local to you, you cannot just walk over, look over their shoulder and ask questions. This requires regularly scheduled design reviews, which often can be disruptive and time-intensive. When deadline day arrives, their final edits may not be what you were expecting. This is wasted time that is difficult to quantify.
Exchanging CAD files using manual methods is not scalable for large design teams or even modest teams with multiple locations.
Each team has their own processes and rarely communicates with each other, leading to duplicate data, information silos and islands of automation. When several copies of the same part are spread across different systems at different locations and a change is required, it’s virtually impossible to know which file is the master copy and who should be making the change. Changes are often made to one copy, but not to others. Mistakes are easily made.
The importance of early collaboration with everyone in the supply chain cannot be stressed enough. Getting early feedback at every stage of the design helps you to manage and reduce product-related costs, manufacturing defects, recalls, complaints and risk.
All of the above issues underline the need for good working practices and secure data management. The level of automation, management and data security that is provided by the data management solution you choose depends upon which route you take.
How is your company organizing all its design data – and minimizing the odds of engineers accidentally overwriting each other’s work? Do your product development teams or external partners ever experience version control conflicts?
Onshape’s latest eBook, “The Engineering Leader’s Guide to Data Management & PDM” will help you evaluate your current processes and determine if it makes sense to compare alternative solutions.
Download your copy today!
Thanks for Reading,
Neil Cooke
Having immediate online access to the latest information has fundamentally improved the way we work. Explore how this impacts product development.
Learn how enterprise companies like Garrett Motion, Kichler Lighting and BETA Technologies use Onshape to improve their global product design processes.
Learn how Onshape’s unique cloud-database architecture delivers a brand new class of real-time CAD collaboration features for product development teams.
